Active Lives, Healthy Minds project

“Active Lives, Healthy Minds” is a mental health and wellbeing project that is being implemented in West London focusing on the Nepalese, Somali and Tamil communities. The project is funded by Reaching Communities - the Big Lottery Fund and aims to improve mental health and the wellbeing of members of the communities and supporting them to increase participation in the development and implementation of relevant mental health and health services in the area.

Members of the Nepalese, Somali and Tamil communities have experienced severe loss and disruption of their lives due to war, civil unrest and natural disaster in their countries of origin, followed by the traumatic experience of flight and then the stress caused by the asylum process and difficulties adapting to new language and cultural settings. The project will assist community groups in developing activities to support the mental health and wellbeing in a culturally sensitive and non stigmatising way. The community groups will deliver coping and adaptive skills support and training to enable members to better manage their progress towards becoming active citizens.

In addition to the above mentioned community groups we will also explore the potential of including other community groups in similar position. We developed a partnership with the Network of Eritrean Women. Early August The Network of Eritrean Women received a National Lottery Awards for All for £10,000.

Active Lives, Healthy Minds(ALHM) follows on from a previous three year ROTA project called “Healthy Mobilised and BAME” which worked from a baseline whereby service users were engaged and made aware of mental health issues in year one, to building skills and development through year one, two and three to a position where they were more content with their life from their own perspective. The positive outcomes from Healthy Mobilised and BAME and the lessons learnt and tools developed formed the basis of ALHM.

The project will be independently evaluated by the McPin Foundation, with a view to disseminating learning to other refugee communities.

Active Lives, Healthy Minds Project News

This is an outline of the discussions and points raised at our alternative consultation event: “Hardly Hard to Reach: We Are Having Our Say” on 12 June 2018 as well as REAP’s Networking Conference: “Building New Lives: Refugees in West London” and... Read more

In follow up of our alternative consultation event ‘ Hardly Hard to Reach: We Are Having Our Say ’ feeding into North West London (NWL) Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG)’s Equality Objectives [L1] and the Open Letter we sent to newly elected London... Read more

Open College Network has this month given our training provided to refugee communities an accreditation at entry level 3. This training is provided by our Active Lives, Healthy Minds Project to our refugee community partners. The main objective of... Read more

We, the undersigned organisations are calling for an end to unequal provision and access to Mental Health services for Black, Asian and Minority, Ethnic and Refugee (BAMER) communities. Research has shown that BAMER communities face disadvantage,... Read more

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